Monthly Archives: April 2009

Burnout Paradise idiots

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I’m sure this is the case for every online game.

To get a gold paint finish on a car you have to have completed a pile of trophies. That’s getting between A and B really fast, doing stunts, finding billboards etc. And Paradise City is not small.
bp1
In short, to get to gold you have to have shown you have a clue and some ability to point a car in the right direction. So wtf are people in gold cars doing getting lost? They always pick the gold F1 car, they cannot do tricks, they do not help with timed challenges and are a monumental PITA. Gold F1 car? My game? Kicked.
If someone with a couple of hundred challenges completed decides to take me down I’m not hugely bothered. I’ll take them down at some point (unless they do it twice in which case I’m happy to race round the map til I get them), but new kids doing it? No.way. A few recently have cost everyone challenges and I am happily one of those that will hunt and take them down time after time until they get the message they are not wanted. Bullying? Probably. Do I care? Not a bit. It’s a competitive world out there.
But what is odd about the gold cars is that while idiots drive them I have yet to see a clueless driver behind the wheel of a platinum car. There is not a huge difference between the 2 in trophies so either there is a cheat (Criterion state there are none, but there is a challenge glitch) or people are getting the gold and giving it to their clueless brother. Or maybe the Platinum doesn’t have the bling factor. The glitch – someone appears to be still, is ‘in’ the challenge but completes nothing, moves nowhere. After an indeterminate period the challenge completes when it should not have done. Seen this happen many times.
BP is still an amazing game though even after 200+ hours playing.

I should start playing Team Fortress online and see how many times the n00b me gets taken out by a headshot :)

Politics

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I saw Ryan had taken a politics test which he’d seen that Mark had taken. Been a while since I’ve done one so ….
politics

Your true political self:
You are a Social Liberal (81% permissive) and an…Economic Liberal (20% permissive)
You are best described as a Socialist
You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.

Unsurprisingly I recognise myself as being there. On Facebook I think I wrote ‘Left of Centre’ so I’ll change that.

Unconnectedness

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My PS3 has had a set internal IP since I got it – 192.168.0.30 It’s in the DMZ. After playing online yesterday I went back to play in the evening. The PS3 could not connect at all. It’s settings looked okay. Eventually checked the router and the PS3 entry had disappeared. It should have been in the LAN IP table and also the wireless access table but it had gone. The DMZ still showed the 192.168.0.30 All odd. Then no machines that were wired could connect. I use Powerline connections for most things and they all failed – except the laptop when I wired that to the router. Everything on wifi was fine. Lots of plugging in and out later I got it all working and I thought it was a dodgy Powerline plug. And it isn’t. So I have no idea why the PS3 was knocked out and why my wired connection was screwed. Odd. But at least it works now.

Some Burnout Paradise stats

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Driver details
Your License status: Burnout Elite
Your time in Paradise: 143 hours, 21 mins, 24s
Percentage complete: 101.00 %
Distance driven in Paradise City: 3,512.59 Miles
Cars in your Junkyard: 76
Cars left to shutdown: 0
Roads you’ve Ruled: 64
Road Rules Time: 64
Road Rules Showtime: 64

Rider details
Time in the saddle: 74 hours, 51 mins, 55s
Bike completion: 101.00 %
Total distance ridden: 607.39 Miles
Roads Ruled in the daytime: 64
Night-time Roads Ruled: 64
Total Road Rules Time: 01 hours, 01 mins, 49s
Burning Rides completed: 19
Midnight Rides completed: 19
Furthest Jump: 211 Yards

Hours played Online: 85 hours, 13 mins, 20s

Your best Showtime score: $31,375,000
Your best Stuntrun total: 2,871,400
Total Takedowns: 1392
Longest continuous Drift: 1.44 Miles
Largest Boost chain: ×20
Furthest distance in Oncoming: 7.70 Miles
Your longest Airtime: 6.88 s
Your best Flat Spin: 431°
Highest number of Barrel Rolls: ×3

Now I need to work on the last 99 online challenges and chase a couple of online trophies.

Super happy cars

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BBC Four ecstasy pills have been found inside a computer game bought at a High Street store.
Mr Thornhill said: “What made me feel the most distraught was the fact we let our 12-year-old play the game.” … “Inside the instruction booklet was a ball of Shrinkwrap, or Clingfilm. I thought it was just a ball of clingfilm, but then I realised there were tablets inside. I instantly felt sick.

“They had Mitsubishi signs on them, which I recalled meant they were ecstasy pills.

Yep, we all know that don’t we. Mitsubishi = the good stuff. So the guy is a pusher, a user, more clued in than pretty much any parent anywhere or he is trying to look … cool?

And the story? Completely made up. Ever bought a pre-owned video game? No way can that happen.

Dr Google wants to sell you meds.

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Google: When I first started working on Google Health, I was shocked by how hard it is for people to access their own medical records. I wondered why that’s the case when it’s so easy to access other types of personal information like bank transactions, cell phone records, and utility bills. In many states you can even renew your car registration online with a few clicks. Yet when it comes to something arguably much more important, such as your own medical records or a current list of medications, we have little to no access. It just doesn’t seem right.

Given that Google is saying it, it seems perfectly right.

We’re working to solve this problem. With the recent addition of CVS/pharmacy to our network of pharmacy partners, more than 100 million people can now access their prescription history online and import it into a central, secure place ? a Google Health Account.

Well hell yeah like the first place I’m going to think of writing ANYTHING that personal about my health will be online and even less so with Google.

How the hell can people see this as secure? People freak enough about cookies and yet Google wants to know what STD’s you’ve had so it can flog you some contraception.
We’re working to solve this problem. No. This is NOT a problem. You are saying it is a problem. You are inventing a problem that does not exist. You are selling hype, selling something for the sake of selling something. But then you would because without ads there is no Google.

Google Health? Not a fecking snowball’s chance in hell chance of that happening.

Net bits

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Finally earned my Elite Platinum trophy in Burnout Paradise earlier which pleases me greatly. 328/490 challenges done, 89% of offline game and I also have the additional content trophies. And then World Rankings. All for £37 it was. VFM indeed.

Almost completed the domains move to Nearlyfreespeech. Bri’s site goes into a Tiny at ASO. J’s site for now goes into a Small there. I would move it but it involves moving Gallery and the thought of that is scary. May try at a later date when I have a whole day free to fix the thing after a move. Data designed not to move… Going to NFS makes sense because I do not use any of the features in cpanel. Do not use stats, error logs, email and I did not need the reseller either. So the move should save me a few $ a year. (If it does not it will be the tamba2 site that will be to blame. Still gets decent traffic). Need to work out what to do with Root’s site (if you remember Root you go way back to 2004. Fun times!). Probably open a new account at NFS for when he returns from wherever he goes. Never leaves a note, just floats off. Nice guy though, would love to meet him.

And FreshlyPressed will become James’ property in the next week or so. It’s ticking over nicely but I just do not have the time to do work that comes in. So rather than me being there but not it makes sense for it to be James’ and he will email if needed. It also removes any conflict of interest – I know a couple of people have watched before for me to mention FP in one of the WordPress forums even though FP happened in 2005 and I joined Automattic in 2006 – not that I would have done such a thing anyway.

Other than that life is as good as it gets. Which is pretty crap compared to yours but then yours is pretty crap compared to others. It is how it is, not what we would want it to be.